Story-teller, teacher, traveler, dog mom, athlete and lover of unique and delicious food.
Here is a little bit of why I even bothered to start a blog in the first place.
The Early Stages
Ever since I was little, I have always loved writing and stories. When my family went on a month and a half road trip through the Mid-west to visit family, I bought a green Mickey Mouse spiral bound notebook and what I thought was a fountain pen (but it was just a liquid roller tip-SO FANCY for 9 year old Robin) and I wrote; what we did, what we ate, every single detail for the whole trip, with my family encouraging me right along. “Did you write about today yet? Keep going on that journal!” My family was my first (sometimes captive) audience.
I kept journals throughout junior high, and even wrote a Christmas play with my sister, brother and friend, which we single-handedly performed in front of our church, and then revised and performed again in front of my junior high (small private school, but I will take my creds where I can).
A Growing Writer
In junior high, Carri Svoboda was my English teacher from 6—8th grade. Every week we had to write a reading journal about whatever book we were reading. Because I was mildly insane/competitive and loved school maybe a little too much, I used to work on it on Saturdays so that I could collect as many of those elusive 20/20s as possible (and so I could go to youth group on Tuesdays ?). She taught me how to really brainstorm and organize my writing and thinking. You can read more about this wonderful woman here.
In high school, I felt like a freak when I realized that I enjoyed peer reviewing my friends’ papers. In college, I took a class taught by author Dick Staub, who wrote repeatedly on my papers “You are a great writer.” I still have all those papers; his encouragement stuck with me. Other professors told me the same as I pursued a degree in Elementary Education with a Language Arts focus. My first taste of success came when I wrote an entry for a scholarship at SPU and was awarded $1000. Oh, writing can make me money?
Me As a Writer Now
Throughout my adult life, and especially now that I am a teacher, writing is still a huge part of me. I love teaching kids how to unfold a story, to choose just the right word to convey their meaning, to research facts to teach others, and to write with language and ideas that inspire. I still do a fair bit of writing on my own, and even have a draft sitting in my computer of a travel memoir from our year abroad in China. (Maybe someday I will work up the courage and find an editor for it.) The times I have shared my writing, I have been told by family and friends that it was powerful to them, that it moved or touched them, which meant so much to me. My words had power to make people feel.
Writing and speaking is how I process things. My dear friend Nikki, on her own blog, said that she sometimes feels that she hasn’t thought something if she hasn’t written it; I completely understand. (Also check out her blog; it is lovely.) Time and time again, I have turned to pen and paper to make sense of things that were happening to me, by writing, organizing, editing and rewriting, until what was on the page finally fit what was in my heart. There has always been a whisper in the back of my head about writing, “You should do it,” and the whisper is getting louder. It’s time for me to take a leap. I don’t want the fear of failure to keep me from giving it a shot. So, here we go.
Welcome to my blog; a place for me to write from my heart and make some big fat mistakes. I hope to take you on adventures, to encourage you, to introduce you to people and maybe teach you something new on the way. Thanks for coming along.
